National Committee for a Free Germany

, Heinrich Graf von Einsiedel, Karl Hetz, Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach, Erich Weinert and Luitpold Steidle. The rise of the Nazi Party to power in Germany in 1933 led to the outlawing of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and persecutions of its members, many of whom fled to the Soviet Union. With the German invasion of the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, German prisoners of war began to fall into Soviet hands. Attempts were made to establish an anti-Nazi organization from these POWs. With the German defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad, the number of German POWs increased and their belief in a victorious Germany weakened, hence they were more open to the idea of membership of an anti-Nazi organization. At the beginning of June 1943, Alfred Kurella and Rudolf Herrnstadt began writing a Committee manifesto. This text praised historical figures from the Kingdom of Prussia who had allied with Imperial Russia against Napoleon in the German Campaign of 1813; figures such as Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom und zum Stein, Carl von Clausewitz and Graf Yorck were depicted as exemplary Germans. The National Committee for a Free Germany (NKFD) was founded in Krasnogorsk, near Moscow, League of German Officers , photographed at the BDO foundation ceremony After several failed attempts to recruit officers into the NKFD, it was suggested by Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred Brette that a special organization for officers be set up so that they would not have to come into contact with communists and common soldiers. Two months after the founding of the NKFD, the (Bund Deutscher Offiziere, or BDO) was founded; its leader was General Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach. The main task of the BDO was to deliver propaganda aimed at the German armed forces. A number of officers held as Soviet prisoners of war eventually joined the BDO, the most prominent of them being Field-Marshal Friedrich Paulus, commander of the Sixth Army captured at the Battle of Stalingrad. The BDO later merged with the NKFD. == Ideology and symbols ==

'' which was used by the Committee. The other variation had the letters "NKFD" instead of "Freies Deutschland" over the colors of the flag During their discussions of Fascism, Nazism, the idea of a democratic government and the history of Germany, many prisoners of war said of their disgust or hatred towards the "weakness" of the Weimar Republic and that mainly because of this hatred they joined the NSDAP or even the SS. In one of his speeches, , one of the leaders of the NKFD, insisted that by advocating democracy he did not intend a resurrection of the Weimar Constitution which he described as feeble. He described the principles of the NKFD as opposition to any Fascist dictatorship and imperialist war, support for unrestricted democracy, peaceful international cooperation, and respect for law and especially international law from a broad platform which united all the views presented in the NKFD, from the Communists to the conservatives among the POWs. 's slogan of "peace, land, and bread") These points along with the criticism of the Weimar Germany were added in the Manifesto of the NKFD; since the KPD was not fond of the Weimar Germany either, its members supported these criticisms. The Manifesto set a democratic "genuine German government" as one of its goals and contrasted this future "truly popular" government to the "powerless" Weimar Republic, as this government had to be strong to crush the remains of the Nazi regime. Criticism of Weimar Germany became one of the reason of the choice of the flag: the NKFD used the Reichsflagge,which was used by the German Empire and earlier the North German Confederation, the conservative politicians of the Weimar Republic and by the Third Reich during its first two years; the other reason for this choice was that the KPD leaders wanted to reassure its non-Marxist majority that the NKFD was not a Communist outfit but a union with all kind of views opposed to Nazism. However, after the war both the BRD and the DDR did not adopt this flag. The Politbureau of the KPD was split on this issue, with Anton Ackermann and Peter Florin voting against, while Walter Ulbricht and Wilhelm Pieck voted for the adoption of the flag. == Activity ==

Propaganda and psychological warfare The NKFD declared the overthrow of Hitler by the German people and a return to the borders of 1937 to be its main goals. Initially its main activities were political re-education, propaganda and psychological warfare aimed at the Wehrmacht. Seydlitz participated only in this side of the NKFD while disassociating himself from the armed struggle also conducted by the organisation, being the author and a spokesperson of pro-Soviet radio broadcasts and a parlimentaire while negotiating surrenders of German troops. The biggest action Seydlitz participated in as the leader of the NKFD was his involvement in the Battle of Korsun–Cherkassy, as Seydlitz and the other leaders of the NKFD urged the Germans to surrender and as Seydlitz established personal communications with German commanders of the operation to urge them to do so. The members of the NKFD were sent to the battlefield where they spread NKFD leaflets which served as safe conduct passes into captivity showing that the surrender was voluntary and that soldiers with such leaflets should be handed over to the NKFD. The operation was relatively successful, and out of the 18,200 captured Germans each third produced an NKFD leaflet. Seydlitz also proposed the creation of a pro-Soviet German army in German uniform, an analogue of the Vlasov army, but Stalin rejected this idea; in contrast, Stalin formed two Red Army divisions of Romanian prisoners of war after their request. The newspaper Freies Deutschland was just one of several Soviet publications aimed at Axis prisoners of war in the USSR; the effort placed into the German-language publication was, however, significantly larger than in its various sister projects: Alba (Italian), Word of Truth (Hungarian) and Free Voice (Romanian). and Hermann Fegelein wrote to Himmler that he "came to the conclusion that a significant part of the difficulties on the Eastern Front, including the collapse and elements of insubordination in a number of divisions, stem from the cunning sending to us of officers from the Seydlitz Troops and soldiers from among the prisoners of war who had been brainwashed by communists". and the families of the members of the NKFD became subject to Sippenhaft; Friedrich Hossbach was dismissed from command over the 4th Army as Hitler accused him of being complicit with "Seydlitz officers" due to the withdrawal of his troops from East Prussia. The fear of an actual army composed of Wehrmacht POWs that would create a German communist state became widespread in Germany, and Hitler devised a plan of creating a conflict between the West and the USSR by making the Western Allies believe in the existence of such an army. In March 1945, a whole "battalion" of Seydlitz men attacking the Wehrmacht was mentioned in a telephoned report to HQ 9th Army. There is no known "official documentary evidence" that would prove the German volunteers fighting alongside the Red Army during the Berlin offensive, but Le Tissier believes that these testimonies are enough to admit "that so-called Seydlitz-Troops were used in combat by the Soviets during the Berlin Operation" and the documentary evidence is "yet to be found". == Branch groups ==

The NKFD was a part of a broader . Although this movement began before the creation of the NKFD, the latter profoundly affected the movement. Since 1943, participants of the movement, deserters from the Wehrmacht and German defectors, had been creating organisations modeled after the NKFD, the names of which also included the words "Committee" and "Free Germany". The best-known organisations of the movement were Anti-Fascist Committee for a Free Germany, organised by soldiers who defected to the Greek partisans, and , which called itself the "representative" of the NKFD in German-occupied France. == Post-war ==

After the defeat of Nazi Germany, NKFD members mostly returned to the Soviet occupation zone in Germany and had a key role in building the German Democratic Republic. Some BDO members had a key role in building the National People's Army, but others like Seydlitz were prosecuted as war criminals. == Notable members ==

• Anton Ackermann • Wilhelm Adam • Johannes R. Becher • Gerhard Bechly • Otto Braun • Willi Bredel • Heinrich Graf von Einsiedel • Wilhelm Florin • Peter Gingold • Edwin Hoernle • Heinz Kessler • Alfred Kurella • Arno von Lenski • Wolfgang Leonhard • Hermann Matern • Vincenz Müller • Friedrich Paulus • Wilhelm Pieck • Theodor Plievier • Hermann Rentzsch • Willy Riedel • Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach • Walter Ulbricht • Gustav von Wangenheim • Erich Weinert • Otto Winzer • Friedrich Wolf • Markus Wolf == See also ==